Thanks for coming everyone, I'm glad you all had a fun time. Don't know if I will be doing a write up for this one, the way I fight is so instinctual that I normally don't remember details after a war and combined with the stress of keeping all my local friends in line, my memory is pretty spacy. Can't wait for the war stories and videos from others though, they might just jog my memory enough to do my own stuff. Soakemore 2014 went way more according to plan then last year (remembering to bring the schedule to the battlefields helped a lot) though Sunday fell off a bit because of how tired my local friends were. Unlike the complete disaster it was last year, the naval war this year was really fun and did feel a bit like D-day with water guns. People were much to tired on Sunday this year though, like SEAL said, I'm really not sure what to do about it unless we bar non community members in which case we wouldn't have enough people. I'd like to get them to train and exercise more to solve the problem of being tired/unskilled, but I tried it last year but they aren't motivated enough. As far as blasters go it was a mixed bag. DX only had medium guns as all his big stuff was broken. I fixed several guns before the war but about as many broke during battles. Hopefully we will have more working guns and experienced players and next year will be even better!

One thing I do want to note though, while we always talk on the boards about wanting to have longer rounds and such, I had a few long OHS rounds on the schedule but in the moment no one wanted to do them (including the community members). It isn't really a problem, but why does everyone keep talking about wanted to have longer rounds but when someone has a war they don't actually want to do it? Do people really want long rounds?

"If you are wet at the end of a water war, you are doing it wrong"
Van: "What happened?" SEAL: "Scott Happened"
Alex: "But the stream is cold." Me: "It's fine, my feet really hurt, now they're numb!"

That was probably just me complaining about the 2-hour manhunt at MOAB. With the proper battlefield constraints, I don't think long rounds are so bad. They give more opportunity for me to use all the water I carry anyways.

That said, OHS rounds can also stagnate too easily, and I think in some cases at Sycamore Island, can turn into situations where neither team really moves nor wants to. 1 hour would be a good time limit for these rounds IMO.

Soakemore 2014 was much more to me than just a weekend though. And for that, I'm considering changing plans on the video to better reflect what it means to me: good friends, good places, and good times.

Thanks...

To Scott, for being a good friend, for taking me to King's Dominion, for tolerating my silly antics for nearly a week, and for hosting.

To DX, for supplying the war effort for me, for making me go along on Sunday night, and for the training.

To Chief and SEAL, for being awesome teammates and rivals alike.

I wish we could all hang out more often. However, before packing my bags and moving to the east coast, I do want to try to put together a war that emphasizes the definite "Pure Michigan" experience next summer. I already spent out too many vacation days this year though.

Perhaps at this point, it's a test of time to see whether marauder or I move to the east coast first. Either way, the future is ours. I get an odd sense of intent behind these WWn community wars, like they're trying to push me somewhere and achieve great things.

Saturday: Sycamore Island
- 1HK: I started at the south end of the island, with DX's team at the north. DX and his team tried to ambush me when I got close, but not close enough. I dodged or blocked most of the shots and got away with some droplets on my skin. I tried to get SEAL to set up in the bushes, but no one would take the bait. No worries though, as SSC Ben and Drench singlehandedly wiped out a good chunk of the other team. I managed to mop up some of the rest with the superior range and stream thickness of the 2000, which worked out way better than I expected.
- CTF: This game was just downright obnoxious. I made a run for the flag, but due to various mistimings, didn't make it. I spent the rest of the game defending.
- (2) Storm the Beach: We defended first. I took up an Aquazooka, a smaller version of the Stream Machine with a smaller nozzle. I got a few boats with this thing; it worked quite well. I ended up having to go barefoot for half the match after getting a shoe stuck in mud. I didn't wear my glasses, nor camera for when we attacked. We ended up landing ashore sooner, but was unable to capture the flag during the second phase of the game.
- Outpost: This game got cut short, and became...
- 1HS: Which also got cut short due to a new player joining the game. While it lasted, I managed to make one or two sneak-up kills, but was too focused on staying out of sight to be a very effective teammate. The underbrush does not lend well to dodging.
- (2) 1-flag CTF: Fairly run-of-the-mill 1f-CTF game, but beats HTL any day, and plus I made the flag capture while attacking. (Of course, that was after all my teammates got hit when taking out the defenders, but still.)

Saturday Night: Woodacres Elementary
- (2) 1-flag CTF: Set up around a group of 4 portables, decks, and a playground, we managed to get 4 people in the area to join our game. I started on the attackers side, and eventually made my way to the flag. After that, things were a mess and I'm not sure what even happened. I was hit, but managed to pass the flag to a teammate who scored for is. The second round was cut short due to concerns over excessive noise being made.

Sunday: Westmoreland Park & Carderock
- 1HS (Westmoreland Park): This game was a mess overall. My teammates clumped together and helped the opposing team score repeatedly. I tried to flank around, but there was no way to do so without being noticed.
- 3-team 1HK (Carderock) light primaries: Trying to play the 3rd team that watches the other two eliminate each other doesn't quite work like it does in the games. I managed to survive shortly by running around after the rest of my team was eliminated.
- 3-team 1HK medium primaries: With the teams mixed up and re-balanced, the game went on for much longer. No one cared to actually challenge DX's team until both of the other teams were down to one or two players. The game ended after my team was eliminated, and when Scott committed Hara-kiri after being the only opposition left.
- (3) HTL: For shits and giggles, I tried using the water balloon 3-man sling on this one. The balloon bursted before leaving the pouch, just as it does on pneumatic WBL's. The hill was quite vulnerable since the defenders had almost no room to maneuver and had to do so on very bumpy ground. On one attempt to attack the hill, I tripped, landed my knee on a fallen tree trunk, and tumbled down. (After nearly a week of seeming normal healing, it got worse at work today so I'll be seeing a doctor soon.) I still stayed to defend the hill for the 2nd round, but didn't survive for long. The 3rd round was more for testing purposes.

Sunday Night: Woodacres Elementary & Day Care Center
- 1HS (Woodacres): Simple 2v2 practice round here: DX and I vs. SEAL and Chief, which took place amongst a group of 2 portables (different than the ones we played at the night before). Lots and lots of ambushing in the dark, although I was less successful at it than others. Later on, I nearly set my backpack down on a pile of used condoms, but didn't see it until after the game ended. Bethesda is quite a place, first with the glory hole at Carderock restroom and now this.
- 1HS (Day Care): Another 2v2 game, this time in a playing area with a whopping 16 portables! Lots of shooting happened in the light, but only the actual hits were scored in the dark. For both games, we simply played until we ran out of water. This playing area was challenging, since I couldn't hop the fences easily with my busted knee.

Thanks everyone for an awesome war. I don't have much time to get out for these sorts of things, but I'll try to do at least one a year.

I wore a helmet with a helmet cam. This seems to have worked well from a video perspective, and I'll upload some clips eventually. I have an awesome clip of someone using stealth to steal the flag in the CTF round.

However, the helmet severely reduced my ability to hear things, and there were numerous times where I totally misunderstood what people were saying. Sorry about that, guys! I think I'll switch to a blaster-cam in the future.

Also, sorry to hear about your knee CA99. Seems this wasn't a good war for knees with Drenchenator hurting his too. Might be worth investing in knee pads for future wars. (At least they won't make your hearing worse like my helmet did.)

Ben, can you send the video clips raw over Google Drive or something? YT compression happening twice is unacceptable. How many GB is all the footage total?

As always, no promises on the video. I'm not in much of a video mood at the moment, and the last one took almost 6 months. Still, I seem to be the only one putting these together at the moment, so I might as well gather it all while I can.

I have 7.2 GB of video. I'll upload them to my server when I return (briefly) to Austin for a few days later this month. You can download them from the server after that. I haven't tried uploading anything this big to the internet and I imagine my parents' internet provider would not be so happy if I tried, so it's probably best to directly copy (not over the internet) the video to a server where large downloads are okay.

Sounds like your parents are stuck on insane data caps? I have 2 mbps upload, but at least there's no cap here. Anyway, Google Drive gives 15 GB free, although if it's actually a server you're running yourself, it's probably faster to use that than to have to go through a 3rd party. If it's a host you're paying, Google would probably be more accepting of the upload than they would. 7.2 GB is not that bad these days, just requires leaving a computer open overnight. Steam, Netflix, etc. regularly pull a lot more data in a month of normal usage.

I need kneepads for paintball anyway, so it'll be worth looking into a pair that'll keep me mobile. Not tripping on stuff would help me too.

I use the headband for GoPro, but I'm sure there's plenty of these in other action camera brands by now. No helmet, and I can hear people. I don't like blaster/gun cams since I'd have to switch the camera around constantly, although the GoPro has the problem of appearing before my head does when peeking out of cover.

I have a pair that of knee pads for work that I could bring next time if you want to use them.

I'm not sure if there's any perfect solution for camera harnessing, but it's still great that we have so many action cams. Having the camera on your headband seems to produce more stable film than gun cams, but when you take angled shots the view is often obscured by your gun. Of course, gun cams often miss what you're shooting at since you are either angling your blaster or the shot is obscuring it. I want to get a gopro after I graduate and I've been thinking of experimenting with attaching it at an angle to best capture the action while taking angled (30-45 degree) shots. This would mean I'd have to carry it at kind of an angle so that I'm not recording the trees the whole time I'm not shooting, but that shouldn't be too difficult to do.

CA99 wrote:Sounds like your parents are stuck on insane data caps? I have 2 mbps upload, but at least there's no cap here. Anyway, Google Drive gives 15 GB free, although if it's actually a server you're running yourself, it's probably faster to use that than to have to go through a 3rd party. If it's a host you're paying, Google would probably be more accepting of the upload than they would. 7.2 GB is not that bad these days, just requires leaving a computer open overnight. Steam, Netflix, etc. regularly pull a lot more data in a month of normal usage.

They've discussed how their uploads are limited before. I don't think they have very strict download limits. I'm moving to a new place near DC just for this summer and I'll ask my landlord about their internet. I think theirs might not have such limitations.

I have a computer in my office at the University of Texas at Austin that I sometimes use as a file server. UT's internet is pretty fast and I know that they only have caps on wireless internet. There's no cap for wired internet.